Reasons and Benefits of Carrying out an Incident Investigation

What Are The Reasons And Benefits Of Carrying Out An Incident Investigation?

Incidents keep taking place at the workplace resulting in injuries, property loss, as well as deaths. These accidents also lead to financial losses as well as legal action against the employer for not protecting the employees.

Now it is the duty of the employer to ensure first all the hazards are prevented so the worker remains safe. If still any accident takes place, investigate it to ensure that the root cause is identified to prevent the reoccurrence.

There are some reasons behind the investigation while some benefits can be acquired as well. These are mentioned below;

1. Reasons Behind Investigating Incidents

1.1. Legal Reason

As per the law and ILO Code of Practice, an employer is bound to investigate the accidents occurring at the workplace. When someone files the case in court, the incident investigation report will be presented as evidence to inform the court about the root cause behind the accident. If a victim applies for compensation or employer claims insurance, the incident investigation report will be attached to comply with the legal obligation.

1.2. Establishing Immediate Cause, Underlying, and Root Causes

The word accident or incident is not limited to the events that causing loss of property, life, or injury. It is necessary such kinds of accidents are prevented from reoccurring. For this purpose, it is necessary that the immediate, underlying, and root causes are identified and relevant corrective actions are taken to ensure these incidents don't occur again. 

There always will be an Intermediate Cause for an accident, followed by Underlying, and Root Cause. To establish all 3 causes behind an accident, a chain of events must be considered leading to the accident. The event occurs after a series of events, and each event is triggered by the previous one. Henrich's theory of dominos is a quite good example. 

As the accident reports tend to focus on the immediate cause of the accident but being a certified safety professional it is the responsibility to identify the root cause of the accident to ensure the correct actions are taken and the chances of the reoccurrence are minimized. As we already know there is more than one cause behind an accident, so all kinds of causes should be considered, for example, unsafe acts, unsafe condition, the environment in which the equipment was being used, who used it, etc.

Accidents deliver different kinds of harm, including financial loss, minor injury, major injury, death, etc, so all kinds of accidents must be reported and investigated with the intent to prevent recurrence instead of blaming someone. When investigating the incident, HSG 245 Accidents & Incidents Investigation of Health and Safety Executive, UK is an excellent guidance source.

• Immediate Cause

The most obvious reason why an accident occurred is known as the Immediate Cause. For example, an injury is caused due to a missing guard.

• Underlying 

Less obvious cause or organizational reason behind an accident. For example, an organization without a pre-start inspection procedure using the equipment, a suitable and sufficient risk assessment is not done before the commencement of the job.

• Root Cause

An initiating event that leads to the underlying cause. Generally, these causes are management, planning, organizing related.

2. Benefits of Carrying Out Investigation

2.1. Recurrence Prevention

Investigation helps in establishing the facts that the recurrence can be prevented through the introduction of the new procedures, safety guards, training, information, and a combination of these all.

2.2. Employee Satisfaction

No employee will risk his life for the profit of the employer. If the employer investigates the accident that occurred at the premises, the morale of the employee will boost and he'll feel motivated that the employer is caring about his safety. If this practice is not adopted and the incident is left without investigation, the employee will feel unsafe, demoralized, and feel hesitation to perform the task accurately. If another accident occurs, the employees will blame each other and it will lead to conflict at the workplace.

Effective control measures, combined with adequate supervision, monitoring, and management control will ensure that work activities are safe. Consequently, health and safety investigations are an important tool in developing and refining the risk management system which protects the workforce. 
In other words, carrying out an investigation reflects the commitment of the management of the organization.

2.3. Developing Managerial Skills

An effective investigation requires a methodical, structured approach to information gathering, collecting evidence. When an employee is engaged to carry out an investigation, his skills get polished, and his skills can be used by other department's employees to carry out investigations. Not only this, due to his unique skills, he can get better job opportunities. The skills developed in investigating an incident are transferable, applicable to any unplanned event. 

Terms

RCA: Root Cause Analysis

ILO: International Labour Organization

HSG: Health and Safety Guide